Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Maragall and Carod-Rovira

He has complied with the PSOE’s orders and has asked the ERC leader to apologise for having met with ETA

Edu Lartzaguren

Yesterday Pasqual Maragall, the President of Catalonia, did not take long to read the statement announcing that he had dismissed his first minister and that he was making him a minister without portfolio. Maragall faithfully complied with the demands the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) had made the day before and went a step further: he has asked Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, the former Catalan “Conseller en cap” or second-ranking Catalan official, to “apologise” for having met with ETA (the armed, pro-Basque independence organisation), without the prior knowledge of the “Generalitat” or Catalan Government.

Carod-Rovira said he had offered his resignation to the President on Monday night. After it was disclosed that he had met with ETA representatives at the beginning of January, there was a torrent of declarations in Spanish and Catalan political circles and in the media. In all this the first words uttered by Maragall were those in yesterday’s statement. Maragall said that, as Carod-Rovira was prepared to assume political responsibility for his initiative, he had accepted “his offer to step down from his position as ‘conseller en cap’”. Maragall announced that Carod-Rovira would be a “minister without portfolio”. He added that he was accepting Carod-Rovira’s resignation “to preserve his government’s credibility”. The president said he would be assuming the responsibilities in the government of the leader of the ERC –Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) – until the work of the Catalan Government could be reorganised.